How Your Body Keeps You Upright: The Ankle, Hip, and Step Strategies of Balance
- Vicky Cheung
- Nov 17, 2025
- 3 min read
When people think about “good balance,” they often imagine strong legs or quick reflexes. In reality, balance depends on several sensory systems such as vision, the inner ear, and proprioception. Alongside these systems, the body also relies on specific movement strategies that help you recover when your center of gravity shifts.
Let's focus on those movement strategies. Three key responses help keep you upright when the body experiences a disturbance:
Ankle Strategy
Hip Strategy
Step Strategy
Understanding how these strategies work can help you recognize early changes in stability and train your body to respond more effectively in everyday situations.
Ankle Strategy: Your First Line of Defense
When you are standing still and experience a small disturbance such as someone lightly brushing past you, your body typically relies on the ankle strategy to stay steady. The muscles around your ankles make subtle adjustments that shift your center of gravity back over your feet. These corrections are quick and often so small that you do not notice them happening.
Because this strategy handles the smallest balance changes, early signs of stiffness, weakness, or slower response in the ankles often appear before more noticeable balance difficulties. Paying attention to ankle strength and mobility can support this first level of balance control and help maintain overall stability.
Hip Strategy: When Your Ankles Are Not Enough
When a shift in balance is too strong for the ankles to manage, your body turns to the hip strategy. This usually happens when the movement is faster or larger, for example when someone bumps into you or when you are standing on an uneven or softer surface.
With the hip strategy, your upper body and hips move in opposite directions to bring your center of gravity back over your feet. It’s a coordinated response that provides a stronger and quicker correction than the ankle strategy alone.
An effective hip strategy is important for reacting to nudges, slips, and surfaces that are not perfectly stable. Strengthening the core and improving hip control can significantly support this strategy and enhance overall balance resilience.
Step Strategy: Your Body’s “Emergency Brake”
When a sudden movement pushes your body beyond what your ankles or hips can correct, your balance system relies on the step strategy. This happens when your center of gravity shifts too far away from your base of support and your body needs a quick way to regain stability.
In these moments, the most effective response is to take a step. It might be forward, backward, or to the side. The goal is always the same: to place your feet under your center of gravity again so you can stay upright.
A delayed or absent step strategy is a major fall risk. Many older adults hesitate, shuffle, or freeze in situations where a quick step would prevent a fall. This is why reactive step training is increasingly emphasized in fall-prevention programs.
What You Can Do to Strengthen These Strategies
You don’t need fancy equipment to start tuning your balance system.
Train your ankle strategy with:
Heel-to-toe rocking
Standing with feet together
Gentle sway drills
Train your hip strategy:
Side-to-side weight shifts
Single-leg stance with support
Core strengthening
Train your step strategy:
Quick step-outs to the front, side, and back
Stepping over small objects
Practicing directional changes
Balance is more than staying upright. It’s your body’s ability to sense a change and choose the right strategy to correct it. By understanding how the ankle, hip, and step strategies work, you can better appreciate the early signs of change and focus your training where it matters most. Strengthening these responses can help you stay steady, confident, and independent in the activities you rely on every day.
Van Wouwe, T., Afschrift, M., Dalle, S., Van Roie, E., Koppo, K., & De Groote, F. (2021). Adaptations in reactive balance strategies in healthy older adults after a 3-week perturbation training program and after a 12-week resistance training program. Frontiers in sports and active living, 3, 714555.
Morasso P. (2022). Integrating ankle and hip strategies for the stabilization of upright standing: An intermittent control model. Frontiers in computational neuroscience, 16, 956932. https://doi.org/10.3389/fncom.2022.956932
